


Chaos, revisited:

by ultraviolence



Series: snapshots and butterflies (life is strange au) [2]
Category: Fate/Apocrypha, Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms, Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drabble, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, M/M, Prompt Fill, Time Loop, Time Travel Fix-It, life is strange au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 19:16:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13254885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultraviolence/pseuds/ultraviolence
Summary: A storm, Arjuna, and two choices. Or, what happens when Arjuna ripped the photograph. Life Is Strange AU (sort of).





	Chaos, revisited:

**Author's Note:**

> [AriaDream](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ultraviolence/pseuds/AriaDream) suggested in the previous fic: "what if Arjuna choose the other choice?" predictably, I have to write that. 
> 
> A somewhat related [song](https://open.spotify.com/track/3dcu0TMrxtPUMrCFxCNPbD) I associated with them. Enjoy!

Karna lives.

Arjuna didn’t know what exactly happened. There—there was the storm, still wrecking Arcadia Bay and ravaging the lives of everyone he knows for the past week and before then, and there, on the other hand, stood the figure of his brother, as beautiful as sunlight gliding softly over the waters of the bay when it’s early and calm. 

And there, in his hands, were the tattered pieces of the photograph, the blue butterfly torn apart, a fact lost. Or, as Arjuna liked to think, a curse broken. He looked at his brother, once—alive and breathing and very much real—and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he let the wind carried the pieces of the photograph. 

“Juna,” his brother said, his voice bringing Arjuna out of his reverie, barely a whisper above all the wind, “what are you doing?”

There was quiet on his part, quiet as Arjuna thought over—everything. Not only the storm, but also the events of the past week, and what he’d just done. What he’d sacrificed the town for. He let his fingers went to his bangs, as he always does whenever he was thinking deeply. 

His brother padded over quietly, and for a moment—only for a moment—Arjuna yearned for his touch, for Karna to wrap his arms around him like he used to do when they were just children. Before the divorce between their mother and Karna’s father. Before Arjuna moved to Seattle, before things between them were never the same again. 

“I’m saving you, Karna,” he says, fiercely, turning to face his brother. “I’m breaking your curse.”

Arjuna’s gaze was challenging, challenging his brother to challenge him, to call him selfish, self-absorbed, spoiled. Uncaring. 

“Are you going to call me selfish?” Arjuna pressed, finally, when his words were met with a stony silence, as blinding as the sun at the height of its power. “Answer me, Karna. Do you want to die a martyr? Is that it?”

Despite everything they felt towards each other, and the things—events—that had happened for the past week, their relationship was never ideal, and Arjuna already prepared himself for a reproach, or at the very least a stony gaze from Karna. He knows how his brother must have been feeling—guilt, fear, terror. When this is over, he is going to blame his younger half-brother, and Arjuna knows it.

When this is over—they’re going to have only each other, in the wrecked aftermath, and Karna’s judgement would always hang over him silently, for as long as they live. He knows how his brother is—how he never forgets a thing, just like how Arjuna, like their mother, never forgets a slight. Arjuna thinks he can live with that. What he couldn’t live with is a world without Karna in it, a world that rejected Karna’s very existence at its core. 

It would be like a world devoid of the sun. The underworld, with the living dead milling around in it, paying him and his mother fake respects and fake smiles and ten, twenty years from now, Arjuna would still dream about how he killed his brother in cold blood, choosing something as abstract as the timestream over him.

Ten, twenty, thirty years from now, he would still dream of Karna, and the world that died with him.

But on the other hand, Arjuna was ready for Karna’s anger. What he didn’t expect was his brother wrapping his arms around him from behind, pulling him closer into a hug, exactly what he wanted, as if Karna had been reading his mind.

“Thank you,” he whispered, and for a moment Arjuna knows that this is what Karna has always wanted: to be chosen. For such a selfless man, there was nothing he wanted more but to be considered important for once. To be selfish, for once. To be important enough that someone he loved put him first, despite principles and what is _right_. Arjuna felt his heart caught in his throat as he tried to speak.

“You’re welcome,” he croaked, his throat suddenly felt dry. “Aren’t you mad at me, Karna? Even just a little?”

“Just a little,” Karna said, as Arjuna turned around to look at him, seeing the twinkle in his eyes. “I’d be madder once we drove past the wreckage and you forced me to live in Seattle with your dad. But for now…I’m grateful.”

Arjuna smiled. “It’s no problem at all, big brother.”

An odd sort of silence passed between them, and Karna raised an eyebrow. “But now you’ve lost everything. Even your art, Juna.”

“No, I didn’t lose everything _everything_ ,” Arjuna responded, after his own silence. Earlier, he thought, earlier he would have thought as much if he had done…if he did the unthinkable. But now that he did it…Arjuna smiled again, a teasing one. It was a rare sight. “I saved the most important person from the wreckage.”

There was another silence as it sunk in, and Arjuna readied himself for the response—for everything—but Karna only sighed, and surprisingly, leaned in for a kiss. Their lips met only briefly, but it was more vivid than the storm, more alive than the verdant sound of destruction in the background, than the past week. It felt like forever, like a new world spread out before them, cleansed by the storm. “You always have a way with words, Juna. We’ll see if it’s worth it soon.”

In another universe, he let his brother die. In another universe, he didn’t rip the photograph.

This is not that universe. Arjuna leaned in for another kiss, certain that he tasted the springtime sunlight on his half-brother’s lips. “It is worth it.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, comments and suggestions welcome (prompts are welcome too for this ship)! <3 I might write a fluffy drabble next in this 'verse. 
> 
> hmu at Twitter: raginghel


End file.
